Senate calls a foul on Sportsmen’s Act

The high profile bill (S. 3525), which was authored and championed by Jon Tester (D-MT) would, among other things, increase access to public lands for hunters and anglers. It was seen as a safe bet with broad, bi-partisan support after having passed two procedural votes in the Senate earlier this month (by margins of 92-5 and 84-12).

Those programs don’t just protect wildlife and habitat, and therefore the places recreationists like to go, they bolster the economies of states and the nation in a big way. Outdoor recreation contributed $646 billion in direct spending to the U.S. economy last year, according to the Western Governors’ Association. Failing to support these measures is also a kick in the shins to local economies and employment.

S. 3525 was upset this week when the Senate Budget Committee’s top Republican, Jeff Sessions (R-AL), called a point of order claiming the Act violates Senate spending rules. He was talking about the provision in the bill which increases the cost from $15 to $25 of Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamps (commonly known as “Duck Stamps”) which are the licenses required annually for hunting migratory waterfowl. That suggested price hike technically violates a 2011 budget agreement intended to prevent such fee increases. A motion to waive that point of order failed by 10 votes and, thus, the Act was sunk.

But what seems less like an eagle eye observation of Senate spending rules thinly-veiled both a personal attack on Sen. Tester (who just defeated his Republican rival in a heated Senate smackdown), while taking a secondary swing at conservation spending. Sen. Sessions may as well be walking around with a bullhorn barking to sportsmen and environmentalists that their support of Sen. Tester did not get them what they want.

But a big loser here is wetlands conservation. Ninety-eightcents of every dollar generated by the sale of Duck Stamps goes directly to purchase or to lease wetland habitat for protection within the National Wildlife Refuge System. It is a highly effective way of protecting our natural resources. Dozens of groups that represent tens of millions of hunters and anglers supported the price hike. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost bump would ultimately reduce the deficit by $5 million.

It’s unlikely (though not out of the question) that the Act will be resurrected, in this lame duck Congress (an especially fitting moniker in this case) with so few legislative days remaining. But, despite the short-term loss for conservation programs, bringing back the legislation in the 113th Congress, after a period of debate and refinement, may be for the best.

While dozens of conservation-minded groups supported the Act as-is, many more opposed at least two aspect of the multi-pronged bill. The first is a provision that would allow hunters to import into the U.S. trophy polar bears hunted in Canada several years ago (they are currently prohibited to do so by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). It’s an odd point of debate given the hunters killed the bears before they were declared a federally threatened species. Opponents of this item fear it would set a bad precedent for trafficking in endangered and threatened species. I’m sympathetic to the argument but it’s just wrong to hold these hunters to the letter of a law which post-dates their activity.

It’s the second controversial provision that gives me pause. Current language in the Act denies the federal government (read the Environmental Protection Agency, a conservative bugaboo) the authority to ever regulate the amount of the lead in ammunition and fishing tackle. We’ve known for a very long time that lead entering the food chain through discarded ammo and fishing sinkers is detrimental to many species including condors, bald eagles and loons. It’s for this reason that lead shot was banned for hunting waterfowl in 1991. It is still legal for hunting game birds and mammals, and for fishing, which is questionable when you consider the scale of the problem.

Just how much lead are we talking about? According to the U.S. Geological Survey, millions of pounds of lead ends up in the environment every year from hunting, fishing and shooting sports. The USGS estimates that about 400,000 lead shotgun pellets accumulate per acre, per year at frequently used hunting fields. While roughly 8.8 million pounds of lead fishing sinkers are sold each year in the U.S. the environmental effects of those on aquatic and terrestrial systems have not been studied adequately.

The health effects on human who ingest fish and wildlife acquired with lead tackle also need to be studied more thoroughly. A recent study done by the U.S. Center for Disease Control showed that consumers of hunted venison have 66 percent more lead in their bloodstream than non-consumers, a result that was troubling to the medical community.

Despite the tiresome rhetoric of the National Rifle Association this issue is not on the slippery slope of Second Amendment rights. Regulating lead in hunters’ and anglers’ gear—which may mean changing not the amount of lead in bullets but the type of bullet—should be studied and debated. Until the impacts of lead from these sources is better understood, an amendment to a future Sportsmen’s Act removing the lead exemption is necessary.